The New Pictures

The Keys of the Kingdom (20th Century-Fox), a handsome and heartfelt screen version of A. J. Cronin's bestseller, lacks the parochial authenticity, the comic pathos and the sagacious acting which made Going My Way the best of all movies about priests. But it is rather more attentive to religion, and its religiousness is not only free of pomp and sanctimony but is also human, dramatic and moving.

Francis Chisolm (Gregory Peck), the hero of this moral saga, is that rare sort of great man, humble, slow-minded, naive and brave, who never realizes his own greatness. At the beginning, in a Scottish village, he has no desire to take holy orders. He is brought to it by his sweetheart's death and by a benign old Monsignor (Edmund Gwenn) who talks, not too urgently, about the will of God. It is this same mentor who sends the young priest, when he has come to regard himself as a hopeless failure, a thousand miles deep into 19th-Century China, to install himself in a leaky stable near a ruined church, and to endure as he may the insults of the anti-Christians who defile his Mission signs and of the "rice Christians" who cynically fawn on him.

By the time Joseph (Benson Fong) appears, Father Chisolm has so bitterly lost hope and faith in humankind that he is all but incapable of realizing that he has met his first true friend in China. From then on, with many ups & downs of heroism, sacrifice, friendship, war and death, things go a little better.

In 2 hours and 17 minutes of unassailable if rather pedestrian sincerity, The Keys of the Kingdom never grows tedious. Toward the end it produces two very moving scenes of farewell--one, beautifully and quietly acted, between the priest and a nun (Rosa Stradner), the other, the priest's simple and eloquent farewell to his congregation and to the whole of his remote, triumphant life.

There are many good performances in The Keys--notably the sharply etched ecclesiastical portraits of Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Vincent Price and Edmund Gwenn, and the disciplined, powerful performance of Austrian Rosa Stradner, a screen newcomer, as the nun. But the picture's biggest, toughest role is remarkably handled by 28-year-old Gregory Peck. He combines a bearing and demeanor that a matinee idol might envy (rather suggesting a sandpapered Lincoln) with a dominant naturalness. It is not surprising that he has no theatrical ancestry--his father is a San Diego druggist.

Bored with high school, truck driving and college, Peck discovered in University of California's Little Theater what he really liked to do. Journeying swiftly to Manhattan, he worked as a World's Fair barker to earn money for dramatic school, later got a job guiding tourists through Rockefeller Center, snared a couple of dramatic scholarships. Then Guthrie McClintic spotted him, gave him a few small parts and finally a big one (in Emlyn Williams' Morning Star) that led to Hollywood.

His first picture was Days of Glory. Even before it had been released, and had given the moguls a chance to feel the public pulse, Peck had achieved something virtually unheard of in Hollywood: he was signed to star in something like a dozen major productions. (Because of a spinal injury incurred as a college oarsman, he is unlikely to be drafted.) At present he is probably the most drawn-&-quartered property in cinema. His contracts call for one film a year for Fox, one for M.G.M., two each, over a four-year period, for Casey Robinson, Selznick and RKO. He has already finished Selznick's Spellbound with Bergman, directed by Hitchcock, and Metro's Valley of Decision, with Garson, directed by Garnett.

Peck is still audibly surprised to find himself in Hollywood. Says Cinemactor Peck, of cinemacting: "It's like ballplaying. One day your legs give out. People get tired of looking you in the face. When that happens, I'll probably go back to Radio City and the rubbernecks."

Here Come the Waves (Paramount), a musical salute to the women of the Navy, is a minor but pleasant enough vehicle for reliable Bing Crosby and rambunctious Betty Hutton. Mr. Crosby, in a heroic departure from character, plays a crooner whose life is made miserable by the squeals and faints of the bobbysock babies. Miss Hutton plays the double role of a girl who is old enough to know better but doesn't, and her twin sister who does. As the former she is, as usual, endearingly stentorian; as the latter she is startlingly gentle and demure. Nice tunes: Let's Take the Long Way Home, Accent-Tchu-Ate the Positive.

The Unknown Battle (MARCH OF TIME; 20th Century-Fox), one of the best short films of the past year, explains graphically why, on Dday, the Luftwaffe could hardly lift a wing flap. Reason: the incredibly effective U.S. daylight bombings of German aircraft plants which, for the time being, as General "Hap" Arnold says in the film, in one week (Feb. 20-25) broke the back of the Luftwaffe.

The film is a lucid composite of several missions against sources of anything from Heinkels to ball bearings. It gives much the impression of a single day's work. The flight itself, the mortal moment when the bombers, committed to their target, are locked defenseless in their courses, the thick flakiness of flak and the grim-gay dialogue between gunners and pilots--these things have already been paralleled in the memorable Memphis Belle. But the preparation, the aftermath, the cold exactitude and inflexibility of purpose, the extraordinarily various and forceful individuality and professionalism of the men who do the job--these things have never before been made so clear or so casually impressive. Barring occasional awkward bits of reenactment, the scenes of briefing and of interrogation at mission's end were made on the spot.

The camera moves quietly up the aisles of briefing rooms, or quietly hovers over the coffee tables, recording the faces of newly wakened men as they hear their assignment, or of worn-out men telling precisely how they carried it out. The sound track drinks in the clumsy quips, the murmurs of assent or pleasure, the grain of each man's character and dialect and humor and attitude as he replies to his questioner. Skillfully cut, this splendid material is wisely allowed to dominate with its own instructive image and sound the neutral, informative voice of the commentator.

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